One step short

One step short | Daily Tribune

Romualdez did not operate in isolation. The budget process does not work that way. The allocation of public money does not begin with Congress. It begins with the executive branch, which proposes the national spending plan before Congress deliberates and approves it.

If the investigation stops at one former Speaker, it risks tracing only the last link in a much longer chain. The President and his budget officials write the spending plan. Congress then reviews it and passes it. After that, it goes back to the President to sign. Only then will money actually move.

Think of it like a relay race. The baton starts with the executive, is passed on to the House — where Romualdez was Speaker — and is then returned to the President. Romualdez held the baton in the middle of the race, and he was not the only runner. He could not have crossed the finish line by himself.

Review the dates that matter and put the puzzle together.

On 30 June 2022, Marcos returned Amenah Pangandaman to the Department of Budget and Management on his first day in office.

Pangandaman had previously served as budget undersecretary and in 2019 was accused in a House inquiry of making unrequested “insertions” into the 2019 Department of Public Works and Highways budget. Congress later removed the questioned allocation, but it never criminally charged her.

Marcos brought her back anyway. From that first day, three budget cycles followed. The 2023, 2024 and 2025 national budgets are all now under investigation for the same kind of insertions.

In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the old pork barrel system. The SC ruled that lawmakers cannot control the money once it leaves the treasury. The High Tribunal’s decision was supposed to end budget insertions for good. Instead, new schemes were hatched that worked the same way, using new names, reviving the dreaded discretionary funds and, worse, making them almost infinite.

For now, the President is protected from criminal charges while he is in office. The precedent in Francisco v. House holds that a president can be removed only through impeachment, not through an ordinary criminal case.

It does not erase the paperwork, however. His signature is still on every release document from the three budget years. He is shielded from prosecution but not from the record.

Marcos’s approval rating has dropped to 27 percent. Economic growth in the second quarter was a lackluster 2.3 percent, which was worse than during the pandemic. Foreign investment fell 91 percent in July alone. Ordinary Filipinos are feeling the effects in their daily lives, which historically weakens leaders’ hold on power.

Someone signed those documents. Someone approved those releases. That didn’t happen by accident once. It happened three years in a row. The real question was never only about Romualdez, but about who came after him and who signed off at the very end.

The recent developments are not the end of the Floodgate scandal. In truth, they may be only the first clear fingerprint on a much longer trail leading all the way to the top.

Putting the former Speaker behind bars is a step forward. But the public is watching closely to see whether the investigation will stop one step short of where the trail ends.